Fighting parking tickets a waste of money, time

We must really hate these tickets and the people who issue them because some of the parking enforcement officers wear bullet-proof vests

There is almost no bigger waste of money than getting a parking ticket. What are you getting for your money? Nothing.

Misread a sign, forget to put in that extra quarter or park in the wrong spot and you can expect some parking enforcement officer to come by and tag you with a fine, which can easily top $60 in some municipalities for even a minor infraction.

We must really hate these tickets and the people who issue them because some of the parking enforcement officers wear bullet-proof vests. Either they’re paranoid or the people getting tickets are scary angry.

Worse yet is getting a ticket you don’t deserve. But how do you justify fighting a fine when it will cost you more in time and money than just paying for the infraction?

“It’s just ridiculous,” says Toronto accountant Angela Nowacin, who maintains she has proof that she wasn’t parked in front of her midtown Toronto home last week at the time marked on her ticket.

She was allowed to park in the spot for an hour for free under the bylaw. Enforcement officers usually chalk the tires of cars that are parked and return in a hour to see if the vehicle has moved.

“If the car looks the same, they just give you a ticket anyway,” she says, now facing the dilemma of whether to fight a $30 parking ticket.

You are doing this on principle, I’m not going to pay for something that I didn’t do. They’ve got to stop this. It has to end

Her husband had to go downtown, pay for parking and spend an hour in line just trying to set up a court date. And one of them will have to go for the trial — again giving up their time and paying for parking. Sure, they could park for less on the street near the courthouse — and risk a fine and go through the entire exercise again.

Maybe if you are unemployed and live a block from the courthouse this makes sense. But then again, if that’s your financial situation you have bigger problems.

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“You never get your money back,” Ms. Nowacin says. “You are doing this on principle, I’m not going to pay for something that I didn’t do. They’ve got to stop this. It has to end.”

The good news, according to Toronto lawyer John Weingust, who fights parking tickets as a hobby, is that your odds of winning in court are high these days.

“They are so inundated with these things that the people who are in breach, as long as they put in an application for a trial, the prosecutors just don’t have any time. They make deals all the time,” says Mr. Weingust, adding it can take eight months for a ticket to be heard in court.

The 82-year-old old says parking tickets are no longer about regulation but revenue that cities need. Mr. Weingust says Toronto collects about $80-million a year from the so-called revenue.

“This is not a way to run a city. If you have powers of regulation you don’t use it for raising revenue,” says the lawyer, who has been trying to fight the legality of parking meters at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. “Why are they charging you money for parking when you haven’t committed an offence? If you have a private parking lot you can charge what you want.”

He now purposely parks at meters and refuses to pay, hoping he’ll get a ticket so he can take his case to the higher court. He says city lawyers have told enforcement officials not to tag him any more.

“Every time I try for leave to go to the court of appeal, the city of Toronto sends two to three lawyers [to fight] the application and I don’t get it,” Mr. Weingust says.

The key to Toronto’s success on parking tickets was a change that forced people to come to court to get a trial date, he says. Before the change, you could just put your ticket in the mail and request a trial.

“The whole idea and all the tactics they use is to prevent you from fighting the ticket,” Mr. Weingust says.

One answer is to designate someone else to fight your ticket. That’s what the owner of Parking Ticket Guys does. You pay Michael Low half your parking ticket fine and he takes on the risk that he wins in court or pays the whole fine.

“We are aggregating tickets and fight them,” says Mr. Low, adding that’s about the only way fighting a ticket pays off. He won’t say what his success rate is but based on a fee of 50% of the potential cost he faces, he must win cases half the time.

There aren’t lot of options when it comes to parking tickets, and that’s the way municipalities like it. It’s not like a traffic offence, your insurance will not go up, so most people — myself included — throw their hands up.

Fighting a parking ticket just doesn’t make for a good financial argument.